Groundbreaking Pain Treatment

I've been sending links about awesome-sounding science news/discoveries to Slog technical advisor Pierre (a biochemist by training who knows literally everything...I'm not joking) for 30 years. And not once has he failed to curmudge back.

"Nonsense!" "Garbage!" "Sensationalized!"

This long ago became a running joke for me, though I continue to send stuff, because, y'know, science hope springs eternal.

I just received an email from Pierre re: an upcoming pharmacological treatment for pain and inflammation that causes no stomach problems. He says "so far it looks very good (and is very clever)."

I'm in shock (the double use of "very" is Pierre's equivalent of stripping off all his clothes and sprinting across Times Square waving his arms and screaming). This is big!

Pierre naturally also passed along a link to the chemistry.


I should probably also report that, as expected, Pierre politely declined a gift of propolis throat spray (and since he’d constrained his instinct to roll his eyes over it, I, in turn, declined to chide his refusal with “Absence of evidence isnt evidence of absence!”).